​1812 Boulevard du Crime2010 SOLD 4.56 M$ including premium

In those happy days when there was no television and no Internet, the entertainment was lived in the streets. Under the Empire, Paris recently awakened to the idea of freedom is a major place for social occupations, nice and varied, of which the painter Boilly is a passionate illustrator.

While the Palais-Royal is the place to go to fashion, Boulevard du Crime becomes the active center of entertainment and amusements. Its real name was Boulevard du Temple, but the Parisians had given it that nickname as a fun for the horrors that the theaters offered to good people.

At Christie's on January 27 in New York, Boilly observes a large crowd engaged in various activities in front of the entry of Café Turc, boulevard du Temple, in 1812. The costumes can not mistake on the time. This slice of Parisian life is an oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm, estimated $ 3 million.

Typical of its time, the Café Turc was both a place of tasting ice creams and exotic drinks, and a garden. Paris enjoyed during the next decades an intense development of dancing gardens, cafés concerts, theme parks and restaurants.

POST SALE COMMENT

This lively Parisian scene has been regarded by purchasers as one of the masterpieces of Boilly. It was sold 4.56 million $ including premium.

1872 Les Courses au Bois de Boulogne by Manet2004 SOLD 26.3 M$ including premium by Sotheby's

​1875 Artist's Life in Paris2011 SOLD 4.5 M£ including premium

Paris had fun. The citizens dream of slum and the misers dream of gentry. It is the time of Offenbach and Zola.

Young Russian artist who came to Paris in 1873 to complete his training, Ilya Repin is carried into the vortex, like the Baron of La Vie Parisienne, the great theater success on the boulevard.

Painstakingly, after long watching of his fellow poets, artists and actresses, he painted this "Café du Boulevard" which was exhibited at the Salon in 1875, and raised the wrath of his Russian teachers.

Taking on a cosmopolitan mix as a theme is a betrayal by a young man who was trained to illustrate the beauty of traditions. Still worse, it is a café, that place of subversion housing since the French Révolution the most passionate political discussions.

This large oil on canvas, 120 x 192 cm, shown on the release shared by Artdaily, is for sale byChristie's in Londonon June 6.

Repin admired Manet but did not follow the path of the Impressionists. He will become a respected classical artist, author of realistic portraits and historical, social and religious scenes.

The café scene is a daring feat of his early career, when he was still tempted at rebelling against the official schools. But it also paved the way for similar themes, the following year, by Renoir and Manet. This is not necessarily what buyers are seeking, and the estimate, £ 3M, is ambitious.

​1881 Through the Looking Bar2015 SOLD for £ 17M including premium

Edouard Manet is one of the great experimenters of art in the nineteenth century. In early 1880, his health is deteriorating, generating infirmities in the limbs. This difficulty seems to accelerate his creativity, as if he felt that he had little remaining time to prove that he is one of the top artists.

The inspiration of Manet is modernist, which is clearly visible in the series of Seasons that he will not complete and where he is adapting the classic portraiture to display a modern young woman.

The barmaid is positioned before a vast space which is a reflection in a wall mirror, including her own reflection. The exact position of the glass is hardly noticeable. In the background, colors in dots figure a crowd at a show, anticipating altogether Lautrec and abstract art.

This scene that desires to be a counterpart to Las Meninas by Velazquez is troubling in its angles. It was painted in the studio. The man on the right who is visible only in his reflection is the door neighbor. The consistency of his position is explained when we accept to exclude the logical assumption that it he placed just in front of the woman.

Manet wants to create a masterpiece and appreciates that this theme allows it. Painted a few months later, the second and final version 96 x 130 cm marks a come back to a scene in realistic line with a towering girl whose actual model is an employee of the Folies-Bergère, a crowd whose details are visible and some additions like the increased assortment of drinks on the bar and the legs of the trapeze artist that anticipate Chagall.

1888 The Atmosphere of a Paris Quai1998 SOLD 3 M$ including premium by Christie's2011 SOLD 2.1 M$ including premium

PRE SALE DISCUSSION

The art of Childe Hassam was deeply influenced by his three year stay in Paris from 1886 to 1888. Coming from Boston, the young American rejected the Academic schools to concentrate in the ambience of the city.

In Paris at that time, the glory of an artist came through acceptance of his works in the official Salons. Hassam sees the art of Monet and Pissarro and develops a kind genre based on attitudes and colors of everyday life.

Painted in 1888, the oil on canvas 55 x 71 cm titled Quai St Michel, captures the mood of a cloudy day on the banks of the Seine, with its stalls of booksellers, its elegant women and the walkers. It precedes by two decades the street scenes of Paris by Pierre Bonnard.

Back in the U.S., Hassam will be the painter of park and garden scenes and is now considered as the most important American Impressionist.

Quai St Michel was sold for $ 3M including premium at Christie's on May 21, 1998. It is estimated $ 2.5 million at Sotheby's in New Yorkon May 19.

POST SALE COMMENT​Sold $ 2.1 million including premium, this painting from the training period of the artist did not reach its lower estimate, far away from its 1998 price.

​1897 Pissarro in Paris2014 SOLD 19.7 M£ including premium

Linked with the greatest French painters of his time, Camille Pissarro had however a deeply independent temperament. Close to the anarchists, he looked for an original way that is not the realism of Corot or the pointillism of Seurat, two styles that he once seriously tried.

Considered now as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rather was one of its last precursors. Living in Pontoise and later in Eragny, he painted local themes : the village, the river, the orchards, the peasants. Close to nature, he observes the beautiful colors that vary according to season, time and sky. The Impressionist technique of restoring the shades without using lines matches perfectly his artistic quest.

Many years later, Pissarro is now feeling to be the last guarantor of the impressionist purity against the younger generation of Signac and Bonnard. After a discussion with Durand-Ruel, he begins a series of views of Paris.

In 1897, he rents a room for several months at the Grand Hôtel de Russie to observe the unlimited perspective and the busy life of Boulevard Montmartre. He knows to capture the mood of a moment.

His spring morning with the gas nozzle still lit, the shy sun onto the wet street and the early leaves that do not hide the branches is one of the best views of the series. This oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm is estimated £ 7M for sale by Sotheby's in London on February 5, lot 43 in the catalog.

POST SALE COMMENT

This beautiful demonstration of impressionist art was sold for £ 19.7 million including premium.

​1926 Art, Science and Eiffel Tower2012 SOLD 3.7 M£ including premium

PRE SALE DISCUSSION

In 1889, RobertDelaunay, a 4 years old boy, visits with his parents the Champ de Mars, where the Exposition Universelle is held. The novelty of this event is the 300-meter tower, completed just in time by Eiffel and his team.

The new monument is the symbol of the exhibition, but not yet the symbol of Paris because its intrusion into the sky of the city is shocking the traditionalists. To prevent it from being dismantled, his supporters use it for scientific applications: the tower will accompany step by step the prodigious development of the telecommunications.

Robert is overwhelmed. This lover of modernism is passionate about the tower while conducting his research on the role of color in abstract art.

In 1926, the Eiffel Tower reaches its artistic apotheosis in the paintings of Robert. Viewed from over or from bottom, whole or truncated, it imposes its elegant curves in an atmosphere close to Surrealism.

The painting for sale by Christie'sin London on February 7, estimated £ 1.5 million, is nearly as monumental as its model: 2 meters high. The monument, in bright colors, is standing on a patchwork of colored squares.

POST SALE COMMENT​This theme is outstanding in the art of Robert Delaunay. It deserved an excellent result: £ 3.7 million including premium.

​1928 Under the Romantic Protection of the Eiffel Tower​2016 SOLD for £ 7M including premium

In his first long stay in Paris from 1910 to 1914, Marc Chagall admired the joyous city under the protection of its benefactor totem, the Eiffel Tower.

The following years were very hard, but his return to Paris in 1923 with his wife Bella opens to this hypersensitive artist the happiest period of his life. His little family now lives in comfort thanks to a contract with the dealer Bernheim-Jeune and to the projects of illustrations undertaken with Vollard.

The title is nice. Marc had married his muse thirteen years earlier but their couple in the lower right of the image retains the freshness of tenderly embraced newlyweds. Both gaze out towards the viewer while their daughter Ida aged 12 flies with her angel wings through a window to present to her parents a big bouquet of flowers.

Paris provided them the happiness and the colors are joyous. The Eiffel Tower is viewed beyond the gently animated green lawn of the Champ de Mars. The surrealism in the manner of Chagall is included : behind the Tower, trees float like clouds, bringing an additional lightness to this romantic composition.

​1961 Lente Hourloupe in Paris2015 SOLD for $ 25M including premium

Jean Dubuffet is a wholesale wine merchant in Le Havre. Fascinated by the roots of art, he does not need any academicism. He early becomes the herald of a resolutely anti-cultural approach, promoting the art of the mentally ill without hiding his own difficult character.

He creates his own artistic style based on trivial and pun. He complacently adds an earthiness that perfectly suits his need to shock. He surprises by his difference and becomes a famous artist.

After several years in the provinces, Dubuffet rediscovered Paris in 1961. The big city appears as a capital of the joie de vivre, the last place where Hemingway had tried to lead a festive life.

The artist interprets Paris in his way in his series of paintings Paris Circus. On May 11 in New York, Christie's sells Paris Polka, lot 22A. The press release of April 7 announces an estimate in the region of $ 25M.

This large oil on canvas, 190 x 220 cm, may be read like a tourist guide with facades and names of dancing halls symbolized by boxes filled with a dancing character. One of these signs, L'Entourloupe (the rotten trick), is anticipating the unprecedented and untranslatable pun that will define the next series of his art (l'Hourloupe).

In the same year, other paintings show Parisian buses fully loaded by his stylized figures, passing signs of various trades in the street. Trinité - Champs Elysées, 116 x 89 cm, was sold for $ 6.1 million including premium by Sotheby's on 11 November 2009. Gare Montparnasse - Porte des Lilas, 165 x 217 cm, was sold for $ 4.7 million including premium by Christie's on May 14, 2002.

​1961 The Life on the Grands Boulevards​2016 SOLD for $ 24M including premium

Jean Dubuffet states that it is expected from an artist that he shall not duplicate what had been previously done by others. His own style and themes are highly original and reach their culmination in 1961 when he rediscovers Paris after spending several years in the provinces.

This series is entitled Paris-Circus, where circus has not the meaning of a show but instead of a frenetic activity. In a surrounding of exuberant colors, people are dull, without personality, each one in his box like within a game of the goose and they do not communicate. The drawing is resolutely naive.

Paris Polka evokes dancing rooms and pleasures. This oil on canvas 190 x 220 cm was sold for $ 25M including premium by Christie's on May 11, 2015.

Humor comes back even bitter in Les Grandes Artères, oil on canvas 114 x 146 cm for sale by Christie's in New York on November 15, lot 17 A estimated $ 15M. Please watch the videoshared by the auction house.

The composition is made in three parallel registers successively showing the roadway, the sidewalk and the dense urban pattern of shops and buildings.

In the foreground, each driver is alone in his car, stuck in traffic jam and stuck in his attitude. The childish figure is reinforced by identifying the brand of the vehicle and its license plate.

The titles of the shops are countless puns. Their often incongruous identification remind that the big city is a threat to the individual : A l'issue fatale (fatal outcome), Faillite (bankruptcy), Fruits et légumes du désespoir (Fruits and vegetables of despair). Poetry is not absent : Fin de saison (end of season) is in line with Salaisons (salted meat). The artist adds his recommendations : Buvez froid (drink cold), Urinez souvent (urinate frequently).

​1993 The Digital Code of Parisian Life2013 SOLD 1.48 M£ including premium

Paris-Montparnasse is the key artwork that opens the major turning point in the career of Andreas Gursky.

Inspired by Bernd and Hilla Becher, he became interested in contemporary architecture. The Immeuble Mouchotte completed in Montparnasse in 1966 is huge with its 18 levels and 750 apartments. It supports the question of the trivialization and dehumanization of modern life, even in Paris.

In 1993, the use of digital techniques in photographic art is new for Gursky. Paris-Montparnasse, 149 x 354 cm, is the result of the mixing of two elementary images.

Compared to conventional photography, the result is amazing. From the left or from the right, the building is endless. Still more important: the perfect alignment of horizontal lines is an unprecedented challenge to the old laws of perspective, a technical feat that is only possible with digital imaging and makes understanding the fascination offered by large later compositions such as Rhein.

Seen from afar, the free or hidden windows constitute some sort of binary grid, which also is well ahead of his time. The visible furnishing and some characters remind us that diversity is still existing despite the uniformity of the living conditions.

A print of Paris-Montparnasse is estimated £ 1M, for sale by Sotheby's in London on October 17. I invite you to play the video shared by the auction house.

POST SALE COMMENT

Good result, £ 1.48M including premium, for this masterpiece by Gursky.